Adobe Isn't Making Many Friends

- March 20, 2000

Last week Adobe created a furor among InDesign users
by attempting to charge $99 for the InDesign 1.5 upgrade just a few
months after the initial release of the product. InDesign is Adobe's
new $699 professional layout product. Folks who had just paid
handsomely for a product that MacWeek
described as "more unstable than you'd expect" and containing "quite a
few bugs," were justifiably outraged that Adobe would attempt to milk
an extra $99 for the 1.5 upgrade just six months after the initial
release. Even so, Adobe at first tried to justify the
pricing, before waking up and offering the 1.5 update/upgrade
to
some InDesign 1.0 users for free. Adobe is still holding the
line and requiring those who were able to take advantage of the $299
early purchase price to pay for the upgrade.

This recent outcry over Adobe's upgrade policy on InDesign made
me think about the similar outcry last year from Acrobat users. If you
remember, Acrobat 4 for Macintosh shipped without many of the new
features that were included in the Windows version. Adobe then
attempted to charge $14.95 plus shipping for the 4.0.5 upgrade that
only included bug fixes and the features we Mac users should have
gotten with the original Acrobat 4 package. Adobe reversed itself under
a hail of bad PR by saying the updates were being mailed out
to all registered users, both Mac and Windows.

"If you registered your copy of Acrobat 4.0 on or before December
1, 1999, you will automatically receive the Acrobat 4.05 Update in the
mail between late December 1999 and late January 2000."

Since I was a registered user on both the Mac and Windows platforms,
I let the issue go and waited for my updates to arrive. It was a long
wait, and I found this week that Adobe never shipped my updates!
Apparently, Adobe has changed its mind and now wants registered users
to
call and order the same update that, again, should have been part
of the original version-- and should have been shipped months ago.

"Acrobat 4.0 customers in the U.S. and Canada who did not register
before January 26th, or who have not received their Acrobat 4.05 update
by the beginning of March may request a free update CD by calling Adobe
Customer Service at 1-800-272-3623. You'll need a valid Acrobat 4.0
serial number to place your order and to install the update."

When I called Adobe, I found that "John," the customer service
representative, was unwilling to ship the update as advertised. He
repeatedly told me I could download the promised update from the web,
even after I explained that the web update didn't work on my machine.
After asking three times about the CDs being mailed out, I was still
being referred to a web download - until I identified myself as a web
columnist and insisted that Adobe meet its prior commitment. John then
told me that it would take four to six weeks for the updates to reach
me and that there was no faster way without an extra charge to receive
the updates on CD.

Games such as Adobe is currently playing do little to engender
customer loyalty. I'd had a burr under my saddle about Acrobat 4 from
the day I received it. Adobe nearly doubled the ed price of Acrobat 4,
moved several features I use to less accessible locations, and
apparently dispensed with the "Create Thumbnails" menu item. Although
shown in the documentation as being present, the feature is totally
absent in the Macintosh version, other than in the "batch" menu option.
At times, I'd considered taking the creation of the MATH DITTOS 2
series to a true page layout program, such as InDesign, PageMaker, or
Quark, due to some instabilities in AppleWorks. At other times, I'd
contemplated taking my sharewares back to the ClarisWorks/AppleWorks
format in which they were originally produced instead of the currently
used Adobe PDF format. Apple's lackluster AppleWorks 6 "up-downgrade" has
pretty much taken care of any such hopes. Lack of access to beta
versions of AppleWorks doesn't help much in this area as well. But
then, if I were producing as lackluster an upgrade as Apple did with
AppleWorks 6, I guess I'd try and keep its limitations secret for as
long as possible as well.

From where I now sit, Adobe shipped an incomplete product at an
increased price from the previous version. They tried to charge me to
make the original product whole and then promised to mail a free
update. They welched on that promise and posted an update that doesn't
work for me, but also said in print that the mailed update could be
ordered. When I called, they gave me the run-around and finally said
they'd ship what they sold me last year in 4 to 6 more weeks!

I wish I could offer some words of encouragement to InDesign users,
but I'm still waiting for Adobe to ship the compete Acrobat 4 I
purchased last March.

Odd Thoughts While Shaving Between Paragraphs

One of the nice things about writing a weekly column is the
acquaintances you make along the way. Joe Taylor and I often write, as
our tastes in computers parallel, as well as having similar experiences
in teaching. Joe had about as crummy a week education-wise as I did
last week, so it was good to hear about his success in setting up a
low-cost computer system for word processing, email, and light web
surfing for his mother.

Joe ran down a number of leads on used machines, finally settling on
a Quadra 650, with a 230 MB hard
drive, 52 MB of RAM, and a 33.6 Global Village external modem. He
installed Mac OS 8.1, Netscape 3.0.1, RAM Doubler, Speed Doubler, and
AppleWorks. While he had to compromise by leaving out a CD-ROM drive,
Joe stayed within his original target of around $200. He says his mom
loves the setup and is doing well with it.

Scott Atkinson and I traded a few emails this week. A simple
question on his part got us both thinking about the subject of software
received on machines one inherits.

If you get an old machine loaded with outdated software, do you
consider it fair game?

The machines I wrote about last week were indeed loaded with lots of
goodies in the software area. While I haven't used any of the programs
that came with the machines, other than a quick shakedown of each, I
also haven't thrown them away. They're archived on Zips.

I usually avoid such software because it does fall into at least a
gray area. Before I come off as sounding terribly honorable, I have
hung on to a few apps I've run across on donated machines; they were
programs no longer available on the commercial or shareware market.

Scott's question brings to the fore the issue of software becoming
nontransferable. The
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act recently passed in
Virginia and being pushed in other states would indeed make software
nontransferable. Some software licenses already carry such a provision.
It would appear this act does little to protect consumer interests
while going a long way to further the interests of big software
concerns.

The cards are, together, a 286 PC card for the Mac. AST sold this
technology to Orange Micro and [a similar] product was also released
with their name on it. I have one, though I've never tried it out.

Both James and Stephen Dauphin were kind enough to include a link to
John Ruschmeyer 's The Other Mac286 Page on
the Web that contains lots of information on the coprocessor and
download links for the required software! Thanks, James, Stephen, and
John!

Is there something about the numbers? Remember the ill-fated upgrade
from Microsoft
Word 5 to Word 6? I'd indicating last week that I wanted to work
with AppleWorks 6 a bit more before doing a review of the product.
Like
most of the Mac community, I find that I'm content to continue
using ClarisWorks/AppleWorks 5 for the time being, as the new version
is wanting in many, many areas. (That's my review!) If you're
contemplating purchasing AppleWorks, I'd recommend waiting until Apple
issues some patches or upgrades or buying
ClarisWorks 5 from one of the many used Mac resellers who offer it
for around $30 and upgrading it to
AppleWorks 5 (5497K). I've concluded that AppleWorks 5 serves my
needs much better than the new version.

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